Body Heat
by Havah Kinny
Summary: Jason accidentally ingests a toxin meant for Charlie, a virus with no cure that slowly sucks the heat from his body. To save his brother, Charlie must race against time to find an antidote before Jason freezes to death. Literally.
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N Alright, so this is a joint write fic with my friend Rhee - her user name is Arya Mory. I am writing the odd numbered chaptered, she is writing the even numbered one, so this chapter was written by me! I hope that you enjoy it! - Havah

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"Hey, Charlie, did you turn the AC on?" Jason pulled his sweatshirt around him, shivering slightly, as he walked into the kitchen.

"Um, no…" Charlie frowned. "I turned the heat on like…an hour ago because you said you were cold even though I thought it was fine, now you're still cold and I'm sweating a little bit."

"What?" Jason grabbed a can of root beer from the refrigerator. "It's freezing in here."

"No, it's verging on boiling." Charlie turned around, looking oddly at Jason. "Come here, Jase."

"What for?" Jason asked, taking a long gulp from his soda.

"Just come over here, alright?" Charlie set down his sandwich and beckoned Jason forwards. Jason rolled his eyes, but complied, setting down the aluminum can as he made his way towards Charlie. Charlie reached out, putting his hand on his brother's forehead.

"Hey, what?" Jason pulled away. "Charlie, what are you doing?"

"You're freezing, Jase, and it's like 90 degrees in here, which means that either you're seriously imbalanced, or you have a fever, so come back here and let me feel." Charlie put his hand back to his brother's forehead just as their mother walked in.

"Charlie, it's a waste of time." Their mother came into the room, rolling her eyes. "He's been telling me he's feeling off all weekend, he's just trying to get out of going to school tomorrow, don't let him drag you in."

"Mom, I don't have a test or a paper due," Jason reasoned. "You can call my teachers and ask – I'm not trying to fake sick, I just wanted Charlie to turn the heat on."

"Jason, it's hot in here." Their mother frowned.

"Mom, I don't think he's faking…" Charlie frowned, feeling the boy's forehead again. "He's freezing."

"Freezing? Charlie, that's absurd."

"Go and get the thermometer," Charlie stated, getting off of the stool. His mother rolled her eyes, leaving the room. "Jason, have you been sticking your head in the ice box again?"

"No, I haven't done that since I was 12! That was like…two whole years ago." Jason shook his head.

"Okay, S.T.A.N!" Charlie called, biting his lip.

"What's he gonna do?" Jason asked as S.T.A.N entered the room.

"What is it?" S.T.A.N asked.

"Can you feel Jason? He seems…really cold to me."

"Of course." S.T.A.N nodded, knowing that Charlie wanted him to use the built-in heat sensor to figure out what was up with Jason. "Oh my." S.T.A.N backed away. "He does feel a tad cold, Charlie, why don't you help me close the windows in the house, try to make it a little warmer?"

"Yeah, sure." Charlie nodded, following S.T.A.N out of the room as their mother returned. "What is it? What's up?" Charlie asked.

"Your brother's body temperature seems to be a little bit…below normal." S.T.A.N frowned. "Now I'm not sure, but that's not really a symptom of any known diseases, at least not that have been programmed into my hard drive, just…whatever you do, try and keep an eye on him, alright? I'm going to talk to hall about this."

"Wait, what?" Charlie put his hand on S.T.A.N's shoulder. "Why does Mr. Hall need to get involved in this? My brother's sick, that's not a Hall Industries thing."

"No, no, I'm sure it's not." S.T.A.N faked a laugh before walking away in what would have been a nervous fashion if he weren't an android and actually had the ability to feel nervous.

"Wait, S.T.A.N!" Charlie sighed as the android walked away. There was something that S.T.A.N wasn't telling him, at least not right away, and that made him nervous. His mother was right, on one hand – Jason did fake sick a lot in order to keep from having to take tests or turn in homework assignments that he hadn't done.

"Hey, Charlie…" his mother walked into the living room, purse in hand as she searched for her car keys. "I have to go to work, they just called an emergency meeting – look after your brother, alright? Just make him some tea, I'm sure he's just fine."

"Alright." Charlie nodded, biting his lip. If Hall was calling his mother into work, something was up, something that she couldn't be around to witness. "Don't worry about it, I didn't have plans."

"Good." She smiled, kissing her son on the cheek as she ran out the door. The second his mother left, Charlie went to the kitchen, looking for Jason. He found his brother sitting at the counter, staring down at the thermometer, tapping it with his index finger.

"Hey." He took the thermometer out of Jason's hand. "What's up?"

"Thermometer's broken." He shrugged, reaching for his can of soda again.

"It is?" Charlie looked down at the device, frowning as he looked at the numbers. 94.2. "Whoa," he muttered under his breath.

"Yeah." Jason nodded. "That's like…4.6 degrees below average body temperature, so something's gotta be wrong with it."

"Yeah, must be." Charlie nodded, setting the thermometer aside. He knew that it was important that, for now, Jason thought that he was alright, but the numbers on the thermometer combined with what S.T.A.N had said and with his mother's quick exit led Charlie to believe that something was going on here, something that he was going to have to deal with.

"So…mom's gone." Jason looked up at Charlie. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm gonna make some tea." Charlie headed for the tea kettle, trying to remain calm.

"But you don't drink tea," Jason pointed out, giving his brother and odd look.

"Not normally, no." Charlie shrugged, putting the kettle on the stove before beginning to poke around in the cupboards, looking for the various boxes of tea that he knew his mother kept in the house. "But today I feel like a cup of tea, why don't you have one too? I mean if you're feeling a little cold, maybe it'll help, tea is known to help you get better, at least that's what everyone says, I-"

"Charlie." Jason reached out, putting his hand on Charlie's shoulder, stopping his brother's nearly frantic searching. "It's just tea. You're rambling, just calm down, bro. If it's wigging you out so much, I'll have a cup of tea even though it's weird…and an old people's drink." Jason shrugged.

"Right, sorry." He forced a laugh as he pulled out two mugs, dropping random tea bags into each one. "I'll calm down."

"Good, cause you're wigging me out."

"Sorry." Charlie sighed, sitting to wait for the kettle to boil. He didn't know what else to say, so he re-occupied himself with the sandwich he had started to eat earlier. Once the tea was done, he poured both cups, adding a great deal of sugar to both before handing one to his brother.

"Oh, warm." Jason smiled, wrapping his fingers around the mug as he did so.

"Hey, Charlie could I speak to you for a moment?" S.T.A.N entered the kitchen, beckoning for the older boy to follow him.

"What is it?" Charlie asked once he was sure they were out of Jason's earshot.

"It's as I feared." S.T.A.N let out a slight sigh. "Your brother has ingested some sort of toxin, a chemical…"

"WHAT?!"

"Shh!"

"I'm sorry, what?" Charlie lowered his voice, panic rising inside of him.

"Hall Industries has been keeping tabs recently on a toxin that Omega has been testing, we believe that your brother has ingested it," S.T.A.N reiterated.

"Okay, but S.T.A.N, what does that mean?" Charlie asked.

"Well do you want the good news or the bad news first."

"Um…good?" Charlie bit his lip.

"It's not contagious."

"Okay…the bad?"

"There is no cure."

"What?" Charlie froze as he looked at S.T.A.N. "What do you mean there isn't a cure?"

"I mean that the only person with the ability to create an antidote is the same person who created the chemical, and judging by the situation, they won't be willing to help us."

"And that person is?"

"Dr. Necros."

"Okay, I'm staying calm," Charlie tried to assure himself. "What does this chemical do?"

"It is taking the heat from your brother's body at a slow, but steady rate."

"Oh." Charlie gulped. "And without an antidote?"

"Jason will die."

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_**A/N: Disclaimer: We're taking liberties with medical info...sorry!**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**A/N This chapter was written by my co-author, Arya Mory!

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"So what can we do about this to get Jason better?" Charlie asked the instant after they had dropped his mother off at the airport for her last minute business meeting in Hawaii. S.T.A.N was silent in the seat next to him, and that was sending Charlie's nerves over the edge. "S.T.A.N," he said looked over at the android. "What are we going to do about this?"

S.T.A.N pulled the car he was driving into the garage before he got out of the car and headed inside, leaving Charlie behind. "What the…" Charlie muttered to himself as he swallowed, knowing that he was going to get to the bottom of this and get the android to talk to him, because his brother needed help fast.

When he stepped into the home, his eyes widened. "S.T.A.N, what is this?" he asked as he watched what seemed like dozens of people in white suits go through every single thing in the household.

"Well," S.T.A.N said as he appeared next to Charlie. "It appears that your brother must have ingested something in this home that transferred the toxin into his body, so Hall thought it'd be best to send out a team and figure out how the toxin got into your home."

"And Jason's completely oblivious to the fact that there's a team of people searching through the house?" Charlie asked as he looked over at S.T.A.N.

"He's asleep." Charlie turned around to find Emma coming down the stairs, her multicolored hair bouncing with each step she took. "Got him under a heated blanket and he passed out. His temperature dropped another degree while you guys were out."

Charlie frowned as his eyes trailed to the staircase. He was worried about his little brother right now more than anything and the fact that his brother's body was slowly killing him terrified Charlie, to say the least.

"I think we've got it," one of the men in white suits said as he held up an empty water bottle that had been thrown in the trash, clearly Jason's doing because the boy still had no concept of what a recycling bin was for.

Charlie walked over to the man, looking at the bottle in his hands. "Hey," he said as he recognized the markings of the bottle. "That's mine. I brought it with us in the SSJ on our last mission and didn't drink it, so I put it back."

"Oh dear," S.T.A.N said as he looked from the bottle to Charlie. "Did you bring the bottle with you from home Charlie, or did you just think that it was yours? It is very important that we know which it was."

Charlie leaned back against the kitchen counter as he thought about it. He wasn't sure if the bottle was from home or not, and it was bothering him that he couldn't figure this out. He stared at the design on the water bottle before deciding against it and shaking his head.

"It doesn't look like something mom would buy," he said as he frowned a little. "I must have just thought it was mine, because I'm pretty sure that I didn't bring that from home."

"Just what I thought," S.T.A.N said as he nodded for the man to seal off the bottle and take it out for testing. "This is a problem Charlie."

"You think I don't know that?" Charlie's voice raised as he looked at S.T.A.N. "That's my little brother up there losing his body heat and I can't do a thing about it right now because there's not even an antidote to go after!"

"Don't yell at S.T.A.N. Charlie," Emma said as she came over to her friend, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "We'll get Jason better, but you need to calm down or else this is going to be a lot harder than it already is."

Charlie let out a small sigh and he nodded. "Fine," he mumbled. "I'm going to go and see him."

"Don't wake him up," Emma warned as she looked at Charlie. "Because if he wakes up before they're out of here, we're going to have a lot of unintentional explaining to deal with." Charlie nodded briefly at the girl before he walked past S.T.A.N and headed up the stairs to check on his little brother.

As he entered the room, he was met with the silence, an unusual thing to find when it came to Jason and the sun being up. He sat down on the floor next to his brother's bed and gently felt his forehead, frowning as he felt a lot colder than he had yesterday.

The second he pulled his hand away from his brother's forehead, he realized that Jason was trembling a little bit underneath the blanket and he sighed before tucking the blanket tighter around his brother and grabbing his winter comforter, putting it on top of the heated blanket.

"Charlie," Emma whispered from the doorway before she made a motion for him to come over there. Charlie nodded at her and he looked back at his brother once more.

"Sleep tight Jase," he whispered to the sleeping boy before he headed out of the room and looked at Emma. "Okay, what is it?"

"You saw Jason drink out of that water bottle right?" she asked as she looked at Charlie.

Charlie bit down on his lip before he thought back to it, nodding after he remembered Jason grabbing the bottle out of the fridge Friday night after they ordered the spicy wings that he insisted on them having for dinner. "Yeah," he said. "I did."

"Alright," Emma said as she nodded. "Well Hall's team is back on their way to the lab, but we have more serious business to figure out, like how Necros managed to get that bottle of water onto the SSJ."

"I don't know Emma," Charlie said as he frowned. "S.T.A.N kept the SSJ in flight so that it didn't have to park. No one knows how to get onto the SSJ except for S.T.A.N and you right?"

"And Mr. Hall," Emma responded as she nodded, pausing slightly before she looked at Charlie with that look, the one that he always meant she figured something out that they had missed before.

"What?" Charlie asked as he looked at Emma. "Emma, what are you thinking right now?"

"Well, I don't have a reading on the human mind usually," S.T.A.N said from behind Charlie, causing the boy to jump. "But I think it might have something to do with the person who helped to create Hero Rising, the one that we had in captivity a little while ago."

"Powers," Charlie said in a low growl as he looked at S.T.A.N. "You think that he figured out how to beam up to the SSJ?"

"It's our best bet," Emma said as she frowned.

"Mr. Hall will have to be informed about this," S.T.A.N commented as he pressed his finger to his ear to send a message to his boss. "The SSJ will need to be redesigned so that it's not able to be broken into again, but in the meantime, we will need to figure out a way to either create or retrieve an antidote for Jason."

"Yeah," Charlie said as he sighed quietly, his mind back to the boy sleeping in his bedroom who had no idea what was happening to him. "We need to figure out something."

Emma looked at the two of them before she sighed and grabbed onto the both of them, pulling them into Charlie's room. "Let's not waste our time then," she said as she sat down in front of her laptop, instantly clacking at the keys.

"Right," Charlie said as he nodded. "Let's find a way to save Jason. He bit down on his lip before he looked over at his brother's closed bedroom door, knowing that he'd do anything to save his brother, and that he was going to do so. He wasn't going to give up on Jason.


	3. Chapter 3

_**A/N Sorry that took so long! I was waiting for the next chapter from my co-writer, but she still hasn't sent it to me, so I'm posting anyways...hopefully there will be a chapter four soon. I wrote this chapter.

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"How do we know there's no cure?" Charlie sighed, running his fingers through his hair as he, S.T.A.N and Emma sat in the family room. "I mean maybe there is and we just don't know about it. Clearly, we don't know everything that the defiance is capable of, not if they snuck onto the SSJ."

"That is true," S.T.A.N nodded. "But we have it on good authority that there is no antidote, no cure – that is part of why it is so dangerous. Once inside of the victim's body, they have but one painful week left."

"Yeah, but that's NOT alright." Charlie tried to keep calm as his emotions rose, anger and fear trying to reign predominant over his normally collected demeanor. "We NEED an antidote. In the last year, I've already lost my father, I'm not going to lose my brother as well, I just can't handle that. Do you understand me? If there isn't an antidote, we're going to fucking find a way to get one."

"Charlie, Charlie…" Emma reached over, placing a hand gently on Charlie's shoulder. "Try to relax, alright? If you are worked up, you won't be thinking straight and then we will get nowhere, will we?"

"I know, I know." Charlie let out a deep sigh. "I'm just scared, I don't know."

"It's okay to be scared." Emma offered Charlie a weak smile. "If Jason were my brother, I'm sure that I would be panicking too, but the best thing that you can do for him is stay calm, don't let him panic, and keep your eye on the prize."

"Okay." Charlie nodded before turning to the android sitting across from himself and Emma. "S.T.A.N, if there isn't an antidote, who might be able to create one?"

"Well that's easy." Stan let out a forced laugh. "The only person who can create the antidote to this virus is the person who created the virus, Dr. Necros."

"He's the ONLY one?" Charlie asked, his hopes falling just slightly.

"I'm afraid so." S.T.A.N nodded without skipping a beat, confirming Charlie's fear.

"But he won't do it!" Charlie threw his hands up into the air, clearly exasperated by the news. "He's one of the bad guys, he made Jason sick, he won't help him!"

"I know." S.T.A.N nodded. "Unless he thinks he has another reason to create an antidote, you are right, he will most likely just sit around while your brother dies a slow and painful death."

"Okay, S.T.A.N, do you think maybe you could not put it that way? You're making him more stressed than he already is and I do not think that is necessary." Emma rolled her eyes, slightly miffed at the android.

"So we just have to find a way to make him think an antidote is a good idea? Piece of cake! Wow, why didn't I think of that? I mean it's SOO easy to turn dark super-scientists good." Sarcasm dripped from Charlie's voice as he spat the words towards S.T.A.N.

"Charlie, I know that this is hard for you, but don't give up, alright? We all love Jason, even if he can be really, really annoying." She pulled Charlie into a tight hug that he couldn't have gotten out of even if he'd wanted too. "What you need to do is to take care of him, keep him warm, and while you do that, think about ways that we might be able to get an antidote. I will go and do research while S.T.A.N talks to Hall. Don't worry, Charlie, we won't let him die."

"Thank you." Charlie gulped, looking down as Emma released him from her hug. "I'm gonna go, you know, make sure that he's doing alright."

"Alright, but Charlie?" S.T.A.N stopped the teenager. "Don't tell him what's going on until we absolutely have to, alright? Just tell him he's got a fever."

"Okay." Charlie turned away, heading for Jason's room. He knocked, but there was no reply, so he entered anyways. He pulled the chair from Jason's desk over to the bed and bit down on his lip as he took a seat. Jason was asleep on the bed, three or four blankets piled on top of him, one of them electric to keep him as warm as possible.

For almost half an hour, Charlie just sat by the bed, watching his brother to make sure that he was still breathing. The steady rise and fall of the blankets told Charlie what he needed to know, and it was slightly comforting, but knowing that Jason's time was limited terrified him. If he lost Jason, he didn't have much left. Losing a son would kill his mother and Charlie wasn't sure that he, himself, could survive the heartbreak of losing his younger brother. After all, he was supposed to take care of Jason and it was his fault that Jason was sick like this.

"Charlie?" Charlie jumped as he heard his name coming from just in front of him. Jason was struggling to sit up in bed and Charlie stood immediately, instantly helping his brother.

"How are you feeling?" Charlie asked, tucking the blankets around his brother tightly.

"I'm cold," Jason said quietly, a shiver running up his spine as he spoke. "Fucking freezing, actually."

"I'm sorry." Charlie paused, trying as hard as he could to maintain normality. He didn't want Jason to panic.

"Do you know what's wrong with me yet?" he asked quietly, looking with wide eyes at his big brother.

"Oh, yeah." Charlie nodded, shrugging as though nothing was really wrong at all. "You know, it's just your run of the mill fever – it's a little high, but you'll be fine, you just need to stay in bed, drink a lot of hot tea, stay warm and take your medication. You may be slightly prone to some sort of hallucinations and crap like that, but other than you should be fine in a few days."

"Where did mom go?" Jason asked. "Emma said she had a business trip?"

"Yeah." Charlie nodded. Hall industries had called their mother away they second they knew something was seriously wrong with Jason, faking a business meeting for her job. "It came up last minute – some sort of recall emergency conference or something."

"Oh, alright." Jason nodded, slumping back down against his pillow, teeth chattering slightly.

"Let me get you some tea." Charlie turned, preparing to head for the door, when a cold hand reached out and took his, preventing him from doing so. "What is it?"

"Do you think you could just sit me with for a little bit first? I don't feel so good."

"Alright." Charlie gave in immediately, pulling the chair closer to the bed as he sat back down. "You're going to be just fine, you know that right? Emma and I, we're going to take good care of you while you're sick."

"Yeah, I know." Jason flashed Charlie a soft smile. "You're my big brother," he whispered. "You would never let anything bad happen to me."


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